le dimanche 9 juin 2018 – Sunday June 9, 2019 – Detroit

Flying out of Detroit was much better than Chicago! 30 minutes from rental return, shuttle, check in with passport, dropping off luggage, walking through TSA recheck (no need to remove shoes, belts, or take liquids out of carry on) to on our way to the gate. Bought our lunch, took walks, and waited to board. We were in Delta Comfort in row 10 so we boarded the plane just after 1st class and Business class. Wonderful bulk head seats. Sandy’s feet didn’t even reach the wall with legs fully extended. Decent food, complimentary beverages, and room to stretch out legs on carry on bags.

Delta flight board at DTW in Detroit

le lundi 10 juin 2019 – Monday June 10, 2019 – Paris

We landed at 6h00 in Paris, it took 45 minutes to go through passport control. Just before we landed, a large plane had arrived from Africa and another plane from Korea had landed, so there were a lot of people in the passport control hall.  The women from Africa wore very colorful, lacy clothing.

We walked to the CDGVAL shuttle to get to the RER B train into Paris. The tickets are 10€ a person. There were plenty of seats on the train.  The trip was less than 40 minutes to the  Gare du Nord. There we got on a #43 bus for a 10 minute ride to our hotel.  We arrived at the hotel at 8h55.

view from our room with the Eiffel Tower in the background

Luckily, or because we know the hotel owner, our room was ready at 9h00. The receptionist offered us a complimentary breakfast.

After breakfast and a 2 hour nap we took a 45 minute walk to Notre-Dame de Paris. Obviously the roof was gone from the fire and there was a lot of activity underway. The public could not get too close. It was a lovely day, cool but partly sunny.

A damaged Notre-Dame de Paris

In the afternoon we went to the Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann.  This is our third or fourth visit and it is an amazing store on the inside.

Us with the dome of the Galeries Lafayette

The Galeries Lafayette also sold some funny gifts.

BAD GNOMES

SUSHI SOCKS

le mardi 11 juin 2019 – Tuesday June 11, 2019 – Paris

Our son David would have been 41 years old today.  We do miss him.

We walked to Palais Garnier Opera and took an audio tour. We waited in line about 20 minutes and enjoyed our own self tour by audio for about 90 minutes.

Palais Garnier grand staircase – Opera

At a Monoprix mini mart, we purchased our lunch, fruit parfait and fresh fruit for Phil, a salad with ham, balls of mozzarella, and melon for Sandy. We ate in the “cafe” section of the Monoprix mini mart.

The city of Paris is under a major construction project in preparation for the Summer Olympics of 2024. It seems like every street has some sort of construction in process.

We boarded a bus to the Champs de Mars. The Champs de Mars is the park area by the Tour Eiffel.  We walked all around the Champs de Mars. It was much less crowded than the area immediately next to the Tour Eiffel. An artist is constructing a work of art on the Champs de Mars. The work involves the modification of the lawn and the creation of a maze. It is to open next week. The plan looked very pretty.

Us on the Champs de Mars with the Eiffel Tower in the background

Eating dinner outside, one of our favorite things to do in Paris, was quite chilly as even the restaurants had their heaters working on the terraces. Much cooler temperatures than last year in May.

le mercredi 12 juin 2019 – Wednesday June 12, 2019 – Paris

We took a one hour bus ride to the Bastille area. We wanted to see and walk through a garden area located on an abandoned above ground rail way line called “Promenade de Plantée“. It took us a few minutes to find the entrance but it was well worth the effort. Located in the center of Paris was a wonderful green area. It was 2 km long, and filled with lovely plants, trees, flowers all above the street on former viaducts. There were lots of benches, people jogging, walking and enjoying lunch. We came across some people speaking Portuguese or Italian (hard for us to tell the difference) who asked us in English to take some photos of them. They asked how we knew about this garden and said there were many Parisians that were unfamiliar with the area.

Us on the Promenade Plantée

We stopped in at Printemps (Spring) a well known French department store. We had been to the Galeries Lafayette flag ship store on Haussmann many times, but not Printemps. Printemps is only one city block from Galeries Lafayette. Sandy thought Printemps was fancier than the Galeries Lafayette store. Brands such as Jimmy Choo, Cartier, Tiffany, Coach, Michael Kors, and many other well known designers had their own “mini boutiques” inside the store. Even the restrooms had gold colored doors and fancy fixtures. We used our new mini-travel-lightweight umbrellas (a Christmas gift from Michael) to avoid being soaked during a rainstorm. At least this year it was just rain, unlike last years hail storm when we were at the top of the Tour Eiffel.

electric scooters (trottinets) are all over the place – sidewalks, streets, bike lanes

le jeudi 13 juin 2019 – Thursday June 13, 2019 – Paris

We’d ordered a taxi the night before to take us to Gare Montparnasse at 9h30 am. At 9h35 am the hotel employee notified us that the taxi company had cancelled the order. So, we walked towards rue Lafayette. After about 15 minutes we spotted an available taxi. Sandy waved him down in the street and we were on our way. The French taxi driver was of Armenian heritage but had been born in Paris. He talked about all of the construction, the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris and was very congenial. We arrived in about 30 minutes and had time for a relaxing cup of coffee before going to the train.

We had purchased first class train tickets and were in car 13. Our train was actually two trains joined together.  The first 15 cars were headed to Quimper and the last 15 cars were going to Saint-Malo.  We had to walk past 28 cars before we got to our car. It was quite a long walk. The train travels as one until the stop at Rennes.  At Rennes the train to Quimper is separated from the train to Saint-Malo.

train board at Gare Montparnasse

The seats were very comfortable, we had a table between four seats, and two sets of shelves above the seats for luggage. We had a direct train to Rennes and were there in one hour and 32 minutes. This was one of the high speed trains on the TGV line. At Rennes, the train cars to Quimper separated and we arrived in Saint-Malo 35 minutes later. Less than 2 hours and 15 minutes from Paris. It was a great trip!

All our pictures from our 3 days in Paris…

can be found by clicking on the following link.  It will open in a new browser window with the pictures.

Click here for the pictures in Paris.

You can browse through the album or click on a picture to see more detail.  Moving your mouse over a picture should show you the title of the picture.